Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: How Big Bang Theory Works, with Neil deGrasse Tyson

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The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: How Big Bang Theory Works, with Neil deGrasse Tyson · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, indeed you read that right, if you made it
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: all the way to the end of the very lengthy
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: title of this Science Playlist episode. We got Neil deGrasse
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Tyson to sit in for an interview with us and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: it was pretty boss. And a couple years later he
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: was nice enough to have me come on Star Talk
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: to talk about my End of the World series. He
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: had this rapid fire question segment that he does every time,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: and he wondered aloud at some point why it was
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: going so slow, and the secret answer was that my
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: tangents were derailing the rapid fire part at any rate.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Even without NDT, this episode is pretty great. As everyone knows,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: any talk about the origin of time and space is cosmologorrific,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: So I hope you feel that way about this episode, too.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Welcome to you stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Chipper, Josh Clark.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: There's Chipper Charles Pryant. Oh, that's your new nickname, Chipper
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Charles yep. Yeah. And then there's that Jerry. She's not Chipper,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: she is actually Chipper.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Today, I'm not Chipper, I'm Crumpy because this man, oh man,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: my head has already melted.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: You guys should see the vein in Chuck's forehead.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: It is protruding.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Well, we'll do our best, of.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Course, due we're not astrophysicists, but we do have an
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: astrophysicist coming on as a guest at the end of
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the episode, don't we.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, my friend, you interviewed doctor Neil deGrasse Tyson, or
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: as I like to call him in d T.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Sure, that's what I call him to h in d T.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: He's Dyna Mike.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but uh, I was unable to be on the
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: interview for various tooth related reasons, so you took it
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: upon yourself. And I think an interview like that it's
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: probably just better for one person. Anyway. It gets a
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: little clumsy if two people that don't know anything about
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: astrophysics are trying to glean information.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Oh here's my question.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, would you eat for breakfast? Doctor?
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it was very kind of him to come on,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: and we want to thank our friends at the Fox
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Theater where he's going to be on April twentieth. You're
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta. That's right for hooking that up. So thanks
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: to everybody who made that happen. Because it's a great interviews.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: You guys will hear at the end of this episode.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I loved listening to it, and I'm gonna go
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: ahead and say my two favorite parts are probably one
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: that won't make it in When you said that you're
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: happy to plug the Fox Theater show and he was like,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: don't bother, it's going to be sold out.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that too.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: And then at the end when you thanked him for
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: advancing our understanding of this light years and he was like,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: that's not nearly enough. Yeah, he's like a light years
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: not very far.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: Thanks.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I changed the parsex. He's like, you're getting closer.
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: It was very funny. Actually, I hope you leave that
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: part in there. I hope so.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: And later on I immediately regretted not saying, well, you
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: advanced our show billions and billions of light years.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: He would have appreciated that, Yeah, you would have.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: And I didn't do it. Yeah, didn't. I wasn't sharp enough.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: It was a good interview, though, so feel free to
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: skip right ahead to that.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: But we'll lay here and go to sleep. So we're
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: talking about the Big Bang theory and not the TV show.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: So settle Down nerds.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I think he was on that show though, wudn't he
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I'm sure, yeah, sure, yeah, he made an appearance.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I think all you have to do is say, like,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: you will further science if you appear on this. He's like,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I'll do it.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I've never seen one episode of that show.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I guess I've maybe seen some here or there. It's
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: it's i think, literally the most popular show in the world,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: or it was like last season or the season before.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Like it's just taken off like a rocket. And hats
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: off to them too, because they like mix actual science
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and science jokes and all that stuff. It's it's like
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: smartening up the world.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you one quote I got from mister Tyson,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: doctor Tyson, from the Internet, and it was actually heard
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: him say it, so I know it was a real quote.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: He said that, you know, people ask do you believe
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: in the Big Bang theory? And only the way that
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: he can. He was like, well, it's not a matter
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: of believing, he said, I'd only believe in things that
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: are evidence based. And he said the question should be
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: that you posit to people, of all the data and
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: evidence out there, what theory is best supported, and he
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: said it's the Big Bang theory.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Sure, right, And our colleague Jonathan Strickland who wrote the
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: article that this is based on, and kudos to that
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: cat because he took some really really difficult concepts and
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: explained it really well.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: He explained it in a way that I came close
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: to understand.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: But he makes that same point too, that not only
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: is the Big Bang theory of theory which obviously cannot
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: be proven can only be disproven, but that there are
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: other competing theories out there too, which we'll talk about later. Sure,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: but that for the most part it has the most
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: observational evidence backing it up, including the recent confirmation of
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: gravitational waves which made a huge st and that as
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: a result, it's the most widely subscribed to theory among
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: scientists as describing the early universe, and that's a big thing.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: There's a big distinction about that. A lot of people
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: think that the Big Bang describes the formation of the universe.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Not true.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: No, the Big Bang describes the time starting very soon
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: after the universe formed, but it does not go back
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: into where the origin of the universe came from what
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: came before it, And it actually doesn't even go all
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: the way back to that point where everything started. It
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: just can't because science falls apart. As we'll see the
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: further you try to go back in time because you know,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: time ceases to exist at that point.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if the universe were a human being, it's the
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: big Bang theory sort of describes the point where the
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: sperm and the egg meet up.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: It describes the time a trillionth of a trillionth of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: a second after they met up.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: What about that, Yeah, which is you know, it's close.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: It's a pretty great time, it is.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: So another misconception, Chuck, is that the Big Bang was
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: an explosion, and that's not that's not correct.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: No. In fact, a man named Sir Fred Hoyle is
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: the one who gave it a name almost, well not almost.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: He gave it to it in jest as sort of
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: an insult because he was a believer. I don't know
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: if he always was, but he was a believer at
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: the time in the steady state theory. Sure, and it
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: was like, yeah, the explosion, this big bang, but it's
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: not an explosion at all, So, Chuck, it's a rapid expansion.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: It wasn't the best way to think of it, as
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: like this so like an explosion. Right, Let's say you
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: have a planet and that planet is actually the universe,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: and it's just floating there in space, and Darth Vader
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: shoots it with the Death Start and he goes right,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and it goes everywhere, starts scattering everywhere, but it's scattering
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: within the boundaries the confines the space as we understand it.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Sure that that would be the popular conception of what
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the Big Bang represents, not at all. What the Big
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Bang actually says is that space itself inflated. Yeah, it expanded,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: and that all the stuff that was in it was
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: in this very tightly wound, dense, incredibly hot core that
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: was a singularity basically that expanded into the universe. That's
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: as big as we understand it now.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, something that was so tiny and hot, it had
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: an infinite amount of density because everything we know was
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: crammed in. You know what it's like, It's like if
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Neil deGrasse Tyson listens to this, he's going to love this. Okay.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: You know the little pellets that you would get with
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: your fireworks, a little black pellet, uh huh, and then
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: you light it a smoke snake and then it snakes
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: out to like, you know, several feet, right, That's that's
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: like it, except if that pellet were like thousands and
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of fraction of the size of ahead
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: of a pin.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: I think that's a great analogy.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: And I'm just gonna leave the room, right, and I'll
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: come back in forty minutes.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: But even still, Chuck, take that analogy, right, when you
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: imagine that, you imagine that snake growing that you on
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: a sidewalk and maybe there's kind of grass in your
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: view and it's at night, and there's a car park
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: there because you're outside, right, Well, sure, that's where our
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: brain wants to take us. Yeah, we want to confine
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: what we know within the boundaries of our universe. What
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: we're talking about is the universe itself growing, yeah, expanding
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: in nothingness.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And he points out in the interview. I don't
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: want to spoil it, but he kind of blows my
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: mind when he starts talking about like this goes beyond
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: what our human senses can understand, right, and sight and
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: sound like forget about it.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's how nobody's gonna be able to pin
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: anything on us, because we'll be like, well, we just
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: can't comprehend that. So how could you blame us for
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: getting it wrong?
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so chuck, Now I'm gonna leave the room, okay,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: and you need what a half an hour?
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: It may take a little longer than that.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Now I get parts of it, So I'll just chime
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: in when I feel confident.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: There's a there's a line right that Strickland had in here.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: It was he says that the earliest moments of the
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Big Bang, all of the matter, energy and space we
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: could observe was compressed to an area of zero volume
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: and infinite density. Doesn't that sound like the line from
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a religious text or something like that? Isn't it just
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: like right there on that border between like science and
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: religion basically.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, and now take this drug, and everyone take
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: their clothes off and follow me right into the grand.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Room, and we'll understand what I'm talking about.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know what, when Strickland and scientists and
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: cosmologists talk about that, that is what is known as
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: a singularity, right, that thing with zero volume and infinite density.
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: Right, So.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I think it bears repeating at least one more time.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: What we're talking about is all of the matter, all
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: of the energy, all of the heat, all the radiation,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: everything in the universe that is here or ever was
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: here over the last thirteen point roughly seven to nine
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: billion years, was in a point that was twenty three
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: orders of magnitude smaller than the diameter of an atom.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: You almost you just caught yourself goanting to say, it's
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: like a little ball. But there's not even circularism.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, is that a word?
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Yes, there was nothing circular.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: And so at this time, at this point, we know
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: that it was very, very hot. Sure makes sense, mind
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: bogglingly hot, Like you can't even think of all the
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: zeros associated with the degrees of kelvin or fahrenheit or celsius. Right,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: And it was incredibly dense. And then something happened. We
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: don't know what that was. A science simply isn't equipped
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: to explain it or understand it or detect it. Something
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: happened to make this incredibly dense ball or whatever it was.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was no ball expand yes, and it was
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: not like the smoke snake. It wasn't a child with
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: a lighter.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: You don't know that. Neil de grass Tyson doesn't know that.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Nobody knows that.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: So this expanding happened really really really fast, and we'll
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: talk later about just those first few seconds afterward, like
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: that's how fast we're talking.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Well, few like trillionths of a second is how they
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: break it down, Like this, so much happened in that
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: first literally the first second of the origin of the universe. Yeah,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: that that there are different ages and epochs that happened
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: in like trillions of a second.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really mind blowing. So as things expanded though
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: in those first few seconds, and today things are still expanding, right,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Things are expanding and things are cooling down even as
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: we speak. Literally every second that we're on the Earth,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: we're expanding, and well not us, but the universe is
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: expanding and cooling right exactly.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, from what I understand,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: our region of the universe, which is something like ninety
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: billion light years across, is no longer expanding, but other
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: parts of the universe are expanding. And there's this really
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: great article about cosmology and where it stands right now.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: It's in aon not cosmetology, no cosmology, Yes, and it
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: was written by a guy named Ross Anderson, and I
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: think it's called in the beginning and it's incredibly well written,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: but he makes a really great analogy. He says that
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: that ninety billion light year across portion of the universe
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: that we inhabit, that we consider our own, is but
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: a small section of one tiny bubble that floats along
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: on a frothy sea whose proportions defy comprehension, and that neat. Yeah,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: that's just our section of the universe, right, that's our
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: little neighborhood. So the universe is unknowably large. We sound
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: like HP Lovecraft here describing this stuff. Yeah, and still
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: some parts of it are expanding. And apparently in the
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: early universe, when it was a singularity, the four forces,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: the four fundamental forces.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: The Dark Side. Wait, yeah, I thought you were going
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: I thought you meant the Star Wars universe. I was, oh, okay, Yeah,
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: So the force the Dark Side, Middi, Chlorians.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: And Mark Hamill's hair, Yeah, prequels the four basic forces,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: as everyone knows, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: and gravity. Right, And that that singularity, before the universe
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: expanded began to expand, all of them were coupled together
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: into a single unified.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Force, which we don't understand how no, we.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Don't, And as a matter of fact, trying to get
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: them back together is one of the great pursuits of
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: physics because if we can figuregure out how they were
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: all unified, we can start to understand the science we need,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the paradigm, we need to understand the origins of the universe,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: but we just can't figure out how to do it right.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One thing that kind of blows my mind with
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: this is when you know, we get to the stuff
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: later on about does it defy other laws of physics
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: and stuff? Like basically every answer is like the further
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: you travel back toward that singularity, the less all these
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: rules that we think we understand apply right falls apart. Yeah,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: so just you know, we will probably never understand this stuff. Yeah,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: you know that very singular moment.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I disagree. I think I disagree. Yeah,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I think that we are maybe a century or two
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: away from understanding it.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Well, you just clearly pulled that out of your hat.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Well I totally did. Okay, but we've made.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Another one hundred and twenty six years.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Well, no, we've made some incredibly huge strides in the
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: last like one hundred and fifty two hundred years in
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: our understanding thus far. Right, So I think that's not
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: a bad guess, right, So.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Be a string theorist right to marry all these Uh.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Probably I don't know.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: And that's what NDT said, that's what we call him, now, Yeah,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: that's what he said. He was like, who knows. It
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: could be string theory. Maybe someone will be able to
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: come up with a unified theory or what's called the
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: theory of everything that unifies the four fundamental forces back
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: into their their single version of a force man. Or
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: maybe we just don't understand quantum physics enough quite yet. Yeah,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: and when we figure that out a little more, that
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: will unlock some keys for us.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: So chuck, before we get into how we started to
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: come to understand the Big Bang and the origin of
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: the universe, let's take a break real quick.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna go wipe my brow.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: You're doing great, softly, jawsh.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: So, all right, I sort of get this part. So
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: the history part, I'm gonna talk a little bit about it.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: And this makes a lot of sense to me. Go
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: back in time. Let's get in the way back machine.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, let's boy, it just feel so safe and
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: comfortable in here.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Thinks of kerosene.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: It does, weirdly. It's eighteen hundreds and astronomers started using
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: something called a spectroscope, which is pretty nifty. We've talked
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: about light waves in here before. A spectroscope is something
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: that divides that light spectrum up into the wavelengths blue
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: on the left, red on the right, and as you
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: go further toward the red, the wavelengths grow longer. So
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: that's part one right, right, that was spec yes, the
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: light waves right.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And around the same time, a guy named Christian Doppler
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: was tinkering with the frequency of sound waves. Right. He
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: was studying those because.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: He's a smart guy, he is. And he said, you
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: know what, it's weird that when I sit by a train,
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: it sounds different as it goes by me, approaches, then
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: goes by me and goes further away from me.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Right, it sounds different than that doesn't really make any sense.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And whereas most people would just eat their figgy
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: pudding and go about their day, he wanted to try
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: and explain it.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: He was like anybody else would be like this new
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Charles Dickens book is top notch.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: So he said, you know what, as this noise approaches you,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: the sound waves it generates compress, It's going to change
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: that frequency, or at least how you perceive it in
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: a different pitch. So as it moves away from you,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: those waves are going to stretch, that pitch goes down.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to name this effect after myself.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Right, Well, I'll let my wife do it so I
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: don't look like a jerk.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Right. So basically, you marry these two things's light wavelengths
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: in the Doppler effect, and it sort of let us
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: down this path to where we could understand the Big
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Bang theory.
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: It would indicate that something, something that was emitting light
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: out there in the universe whose light moved toward the
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: red end of the spectrum would be emitting longer wavelengths,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: which would suggest, based on Christian Doppler's findings, that it
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: was moving away, right.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And they found that. They said, look at these stars,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: some of the light is falling into this right hand side,
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: and does that mean it's moving away and it's getting faster, right,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: and that it wants to get away from us.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: That's where Edwin Hubble came in. He basically said, yeah,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: this is really weird, guys, because some of these stars
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: appear to have a velocity that's proportional to its distance
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: from the Earth. Like there seems to be some sort
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: of rhyme or reason here to it. And it suggested
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: to Hubble and later on to everybody else, including Einstein,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: as we'll see that the universe itself was expanding, and
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: this is where we came to the genuine origin of
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the Big Bang theory, the idea that the universe was
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: expanding and at a constant.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Rate too, right, yes, is that the idea is that
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: the Hubble constant?
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, the the Hubble constant is the proportion between,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: or the relationship between how fast something is moving away
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: from us to its distance from us.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I guess it is so constant rate.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And actually no, the universe appears to be expanding more quickly.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Than it was before. Yeah.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so it's increasing, which is that's what makes.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: A lot of people really ner relationship. Yeah, makes sense.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Hubble constant has to do not necessarily with
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the inflation of universe itself or the expansion universe itself,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: but that how far or how fast, uh say, a
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: star is moving away from us, and the further away
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: from us it is, it appears to be moving faster
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: than others that are closer.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we should point out you said inflation and
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: or expansion, And apparently if you're an insider, huh, if
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: you're a scientist, you'd probably say inflation.
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: So expansion is the basis of the Big Bang theory.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: It's the idea that the universe has expanded over time,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: so that by logic, since time is one of the
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: four dimensions that we live in, right, You've got the
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: three dimensions plus time, so therefore space time describes the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: fabric of the universe and the reality we live in. Right,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: So by logic of that, if you went backward in time,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: the universe would be smaller and smaller and smaller. And
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: the more they started looking into it, the more their
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: minds started popping as they realized, like, Wow, this thing
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: was really really small ones, and that's the basis of it.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Inflation theory comes in and suggests how that happened, how
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: that expansion happened, and it fills in a lot of
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: blanks that we'll also talk about.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you mentioned Einstein earlier, he's a noted smart guy. Yeah,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: and he actually had some issues because it conflicted somewhat
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: with his general relativity theories, because he subscribed to his
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: own theory that the universal static, it's not expanding, right.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: I think like he was like a member of the
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: there's a way of viewing the universe that like it
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: was always this way, it was always spread out this way, right,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: it wasn't getting bigger, that's nuts. And so he figured
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: that his general theory of relativity would prove this, and
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: actually he was extremely surprised to find that his own
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: general theory of relativity actually said, no, the universe is
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: either expanding or contracting. It's certainly not steady. And then
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Edwin Hubble came along and he had his findings in
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Einstein said, you know what, I was wrong.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's big enough of man to admit it.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the kind of guy I am.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: And one day people are going to keep my brain
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: in a jar in a barn.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: And slice it up. It's going to go on a
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: car trip. That was a good episode we did.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Too, Yeah did we do one on that?
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, on its own Einstein's brain.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right, boy. Those were the good old.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Days Einstein's Brain episodes.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, all right, so let's talk about some of
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: the predictions that rose from the theory that the universe
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: is expanding. One is, and Strickland says the universe is
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: homogeneous and isotropic, which is a fancy way of saying
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: it's made up of the same materials in completely uniform.
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Here is one of the first times we run into
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: something where you're like, what are you talking about. It's
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: funny if you read Strickland's article, and I sent him
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: an email saying as much that I was like, this
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: is really well written. Yeah, but if you just read
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the words you're saying, it sounds like it was written
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: by someone who is totally insane.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I know.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: And he makes the point too, He's like, well, yeah,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: all you have to do is look out into the
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Milky Way or anything like that, anything we can see
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: easily and see that it looks different, Like there's not
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: a star that looks just like our son with the
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: same number of planets looking around.
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: The point is that you look if you go out
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: as several orders of magnification and look at the universe
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: outside of any given galaxy. You're gonna see that. Actually, Yeah,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: everything's distributed pretty evenly throughout the universe, and so that
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: makes it homogeneous. And then secondly, it's isotropic, meaning that
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: there is no center to the universe. There's no central point.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which some people positive that the Earth is the
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: center of the universe. Well, we'll talk a little bit
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: about that later, Okay, but that's wrong, right.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, it hasn't been disproven, but it's just extremely unlikely,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a very human centric thing to say.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: But the reason why some people say that is that
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: they are if you look around, that expansion that we're
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: seeing is everything's going away from us, which is like,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: why is that happening? Like we should be going along
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: at least with something else. But the idea is that
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: we're not because we're the center of the universe. But
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the implication that are so mind boggling that it's just
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: not possible almost, yeah, that we're actually at the center
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: of the universe when we're just the small segment of
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: a tiny bubble in a frothy sea that defies proportions.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: There's no way that's the center of the universe.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: So another prediction was and we talked a little bit
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: about the intense heat at the very first moments of
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: the Big Bang, and if that were true, then you
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: would feel and see this radiation I guess, not see it,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: but you would have this radiation expanded over the entire
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: galaxy in roughly equal proportions.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because again, remember the universe is homogeneous and isotropic,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: so if there was radiation, it should be evenly distributed.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there'd be like they call it an echo I've
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: seen described in some make circles.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Right, Okay, So apparently back in the forties they detected
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: this stuff and didn't know what they were looking at,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: and in the sixties they figured out, holy cow, this
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: is the cosmic microwave background, which is basically I think
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: of it as more like a fingerprint, the fingerprints of
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the universe, right, Yeah, and it's evenly distributed. It's this
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: trace radiation that's still around from the Big Bang, which
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: is pretty amazing. So when you put that in the
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: discovery that the universe does seem to be homogeneous and isotropic,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: along with the fact that we discovered this cosmic radiation
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: background that's evenly distributed throughout the universe, it really gives
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: a lot of credence to the Big Bang theory, and
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: so too does this gravitational wave, the gravitational wave discovery.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: They apparently found curls in the cosmic microwave background that
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: were our remnants of gravitational wave from the Big Bang too,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: So it's just getting supported all over the place, and
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: everybody's super happy.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like real observational data there, all right, we
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: tease those those first nano seconds, nano moments after the
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Big Bang, So let's talk about them right now. The
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: earliest thing that scientists can even talk about like with
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: a straight face, like later on when they're having drinks
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: at the bar, that they talk about before this, right,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: but if they're like on a podium in front of
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: an audience, yeah, they can go back as far as
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: I'll just say the equation, even though it will make
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: no sense to anyone. T equals one times ten to
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: the negative forty three seconds.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Man, Yes, okay, so T yeah equals the time after
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: the creation of the universe, yep. And as far back
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: as they've gone is point.
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: Zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: zero zero.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: One second after the creation of the universe. That's how
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: far back they've been able to trace the Big Bang
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: forty three nice work in the amazing That fraction of
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: one second is how far back they've been able to
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: figure it out. And so much happened in that first second. Chuck,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: that just fractions of that fraction are, like I said before,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: like different epochs in the era or the age of
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: the universe, like entire epochs happened in trillions of a
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: trillionth of a second.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: It's just so mind boggling.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I love it though, Like I've really given myself over
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: to this. I I was fighting at first, like, well
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: that doesn't make sense. I don't want to how does
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: that make sense? And I did look plenty of stuff up, yeah,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: but I also just kind of was like, I'm just
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: taking it to submit on faith, despite what NDT says,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: like you do kind of have to take this on faith,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: especially if you're not an astrophysicist. And I just kind
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: of gave myself over to it, and I love it.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: You know what, happens when my mind gets bent like
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: that too far. I just have some pie.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Oh that's good stuff.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we's kind of stare at the wall and have
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: some pie.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: What do you recommend that matter began? Okay, so something's
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: super sweet not fruity.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Uh, what's a fruity pie, like a.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Cherry pie or apple pie?
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: Hmmm.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: I like a good apple crumble pie. Oh yeah, I
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: do too, but not like the one with the crisscross pastry.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: On top, don't. I don't really discriminate against pie.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I tend more toward the fruity section of the pie spectrum,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: and I tend to think of peacon like right in
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: the middle. But then on the other end you have
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: like your creamy and chocolate moose pies and stuff like that.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I tend to be on the other side a little or.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Good lemon pie, lemon ice.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: That's good stuff.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: What I don't get is the cheddar on the apple pie.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I've never gotten that.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: I've never tried it. Maybe I should.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Those people are obviously crazy.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: I like sweet and savory together, so maybe I should
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: give it a whirl. Oh yeah, you have to start
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: talking about this again.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Dip a French prye in a frosty and call it
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: a day.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: All right. So at that point that you described, you know,
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: don't say all the zeros again, But at that point
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: the universe was tiny, tiny, tiny and small and dense
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: and hot, and the area of the universe spanned a
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: region of about three point nine by ten to thirty
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: four inches everything.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: And that area right ten to the negative thirty three centimeters. Again,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the average diameter of an atom or roughly something like
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: that is ten to the negative ten. Yeah, this is
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: that much smaller than an atom. And everything that's in
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the universe now was encapsulated in that tiny little thing,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: whatever it was.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: And again, like surely astrophysicists and cosmologists when they were
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: coming up with these calculations are like this can't be right. Yeah,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: and I guess over time they were like, it seems
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: to be right.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Either we're all just totally off our rockers and really
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: somebody forgot to carry one and everybody forgot the carry
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: you one, or this is really how things started, and
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: it's just mind boggling to think.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: All right. So in that very first, first, first, first moment,
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: theorists think that those four primary forces that we mentioned
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: are still hanging together. Sure, they were still united, and
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: that matter and energy were inseparable at this point.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Which is another don't feel bad if like you're sitting
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: there going like, how.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: Is that possible? No one knows.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they just see, like the calculations bear that out.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Is another way to put it, you know, that's right,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: But that's how it was. Matter and energy were one
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: and the same.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: And askings expanded. We'll go into these in detail. We
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: go through something called bariogenesis, particle cosmology, and then standard cosmology. Right,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: and as this time passes, things become a little more
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: easy to understand. And when I say easy to understand,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: I mean extremely difficult, but at least at least your
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: mind can wrap around it.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, start too, at least right. Yeah, So remember we
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: started at tea, which is the time after the creation
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: of the universe. T equals one times ten to the
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: negative forty three seconds.
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: The next the next big part where things start and
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: actually in between the two gravities separated from the from
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the four fundamental forces.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just a little thing like that.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Right, But the next big one that came along was
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: at ten to the negative thirty six seconds, and this
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: is where bariogenesis happened. And around this time also, this
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: is where the electro week, which is electromagnetic and weak
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: force combined together, separated from the strong magnetic force. And
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: apparently here at that ten to the negative thirty six
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: power seconds, that was where inflation happened. That's that's where
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: the expansion began.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Right, And that's where we actually could begin to observe
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: some kind of matter.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they think that what happened was a tremendous
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: amount of matter and anti matter were created.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but that and we did it.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I don't remember a lot of about the details, but
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: remember we a podcast on antimatter spacecraft, how amazing those were.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: But antimatter and matter like to just destroy each other
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: and effectively cancel one another out. But apparently at the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: beginning of the universe, at the origin of the universe,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: it's suggested by this that there was a slight imbalance
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: in whatever makes matter and whatever makes antimatter, so that
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: there was slightly more matter that was created than antimatter,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: which is that right, so that that stuff survived. Had
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the balance been the other direction, there'd be slightly more
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: antimatter than matter now, and who knows what kind of
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: loopy bizarro universe that would.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Have created, or if there would have been anything at all.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: So all that matter that survived is the matter that
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: we see in the universe now, and that's a lot
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: of matter. So imagine, since this is just a tiny
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: fraction of the matter that was created and destroyed by
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: the antimatter that was also created, how much matter and
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: antimatter was created at ten to the negative thirty six seconds? Yeah,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: through barriogenesis.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Again, it's just mind boggling.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: And that was the result chuck of energy and matter
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: uncoupling as well.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Right, that's right, okay, all right, and this is the
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: point where we can actually start to you know, we
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: did one on the Large Hadrink collider. It's a particle accelerator,
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: the biggest and best that we have, yeah, on the Earth.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: And this is where you can actually use a particle
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: accelerator to recreate and look at this stuff, right, so
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: we can actually observe this at this point.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we can smash things together and be like kaboom,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: look at that early universe. That's what they do, Sara.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, huh. All right, well, people should listen to
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: that one too, by the way, Oh yeah, that would
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: be a good like primer.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: That was the one where we wondered whether it was
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: gonna end the universe or not.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Right, it did not not yet. So at this point
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: there is still no light. Things are two dents, and
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: it is still just a dark dent area, right exactly.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: And about I think during the particle cosmology epoch, the
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: electromagnetic force and the weak force breakoff into separate forces, that's.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Right, and we still can't at this point. These subatomic
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: particles still can't bond. They're there, they can form, right,
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: but they can't hook up and party.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Right exactly. That actually didn't start to take place until
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: we reach the standard cosmology age, which is the age
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: that I believe we're in now, right.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which started point oh one seconds after the initial bang.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Right one hundredth of a second. So we've gone through
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: that many ages and we haven't even mentioned them all
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: now in those that within that first second.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy, it is crazy.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: So that standard cosmology this is about where the astrophysicists
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: and cosmologists say, we understand it from about here on
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: out right. Everything else is a little shaky, but we've
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: got some observational data that backs it up. But here
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: is where neutrons and protons were formed, and a little
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: after that they started to be able to form nuclei
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: through nucleosynthesis, right, and they would ultimately be the building
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: blocks of atoms.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Right. So at this point, things are still expanding and
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: cooling at a rapid rate, and we can actually there
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: are no atoms yet. But like you said, it's too
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: hot at this point for electrons to complete that process, right,
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: still too hot in the hot tub.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean after one hundred seconds, the universe had
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: cooled to a temperature cooled after one hundred seconds to
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: one point eight billion degrees farentheight or a billion degrees
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: since celsius. That was how hot it was still after
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: one hundred seconds.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Should we take another break here? Let's all right, let's
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: do that and we'll come back and explain the rest
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: of it in great easy to understand detail.
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: Man soft wee jaw shu.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: Soft.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: All right, buddy, when we left off, things were expanding
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: and cooling.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: And they still are actually the end yep, nope, good
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: night everyone.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: And everyone hears Neil degrass tyson.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: That take us home. So uh fifty six thousand years
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: after the creation of the universe, or after the Big Bang,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: we were at a temperature of fifteen thousand, seven hundred
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: and forty degrees farentheit nice and cool or eighty seven
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six degrees celsius. Right after another three
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty four thousand years, So at three hundred
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: and eighty thousand years after it had cooled down to
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: four thousand, just under five thousand degrees fahrenheight and just
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: under three thousand degrees celsius, and finally here atoms started
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: to form because protons and electrons could combine. And the
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: other thing that happened to was the density had expanded
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: out enough, the volume had increases a better way to
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: put it, and the temperature had cooled so that suddenly
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the universe was now transparent. We could see through it.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Up to this point, at three hundred and seventy nine
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: thousand years, you still couldn't see through it. It was too
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: dense and too hot. And at about three hundred and
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: eighty thousand years it hits that point and you can
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: see it like we do now.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we finally have light. At that point, those cosmic
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: microwave background radiation was that we talked about earlier. It's
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: locked in. I don't think we mentioned earlier where we're
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: at now temperature wise, Just to kind of put it
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: in perspective, we currently are at roughly negative four hundred
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: and fifty four point eight degrees fahrenheit negative two seventy
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: point four degree celsius.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the temperature of space right now, right, yeah, yeah,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: so it's definitely cool. Apparently it's still cooling, like, it's
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: still not at absolute zero yet, which is the lowest
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: temperature or the lowest activity that atoms will move at ever. Right,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: So it's still cooling and still expanding.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: All right, So here's when things really heat up or
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: I guess really cool down. Sorry, bad fun. Strickland points
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: out for the next hundred million years or so, this
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: is when the universe is really cooling. It's expanding, and
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: then you have matter clusters together, yeah, eventually forms gas.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: And this is the quick view. We'll dive into it.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: Those gases form stars, so stars cluster into galaxies, those
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: galaxies cluster together into solar systems. Right, that's the overview.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: And so what they think happened was because this really
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. As a matter of fact, one
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: of the criticisms of big bang theories that it violates
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the law of entropy, that organizations become more disordered and
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: chaotic over time, and the idea that planets and galaxies
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: and things formed became more that's the opposite, right exactly,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: And so they've really kind of looked into how anything
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: would have formed at all, and what they think happened
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: was that back in say the ten to the negative
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: forty three second era, there were quantum fluctuations, little vacuum
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: energy fluctuations within this universe, this tiny little universe, and
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: that as the universe expanded very quickly, those fluctuations grew
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: tremendously in size, and the vacuum energy in the cosmic
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: microwave background, those little fluctuations that are on there were
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: just different enough from the other spots in the universe
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: that they had slightly more density and thus exerted slightly
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: more gravitational pull than other areas, and so more matters
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: so attract around them, and they started to form stars,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: and the stars started to form galaxies and planets started
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: to form around them, and all of a sudden, what
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: had just started out as little vacuum energy became ultimately
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: universal hotspots where you could find matter clustered together, which
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: explains why so much of it is deep of deep
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: space is just void, and why some of it has stuff.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Apparently it all began with these little, tiny quantum fluctuations
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: way back trillions of a trillions of a second after
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: the universe was created.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: So like a really cool dude at a party the
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: size of all humankind, and he's so cool that people
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: start hanging out with him, and that his party grows
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: a little bigger. Sure, is that a good way to
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: describe it?
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I think that's better than anybody could ever hope to.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: So it's an attraction basically that drew things together ever
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: so slightly enough to form larger bodies and then larger bodies.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And the reason why they think this happened is
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: because these tiny little fluctuations, little little details in these
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: little this little universe grow bigger over time, right, especially
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: if you look at this inflation growing as a process
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: of time rather than just like volume expansion. It's also
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: time is a dimension to it, right, Yeah, So it
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: makes total sense in that just these little things would
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: get bigger as the universe itself got bigger too.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Well, does that mean that the universe and being coy here,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: does that mean the universe will ever expand for all
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: of time infinitely?
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: So I mean you're talking about like that debate, right, Yeah, Yeah,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: there's a whole debate over whether or not it's ever
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: going to stop, and all of it comes down to
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: how much matters in the universe, which we don't quite
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: know yet.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: When they calculate the matter we do know about, they
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: realize that there's actually some that you can't account for,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and that's dark matter, because we know that there's something
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: that's making stars behave differently, or there's clearly some matter
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: that we can't detect that's out there, So we can't
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: account for all the matter in the universe. So we
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: don't know how much matters in the universe.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: Right, But the idea is if there's enough, then that
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: gravity will reverse and things will start to contract again, right.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Right, because gravity is this force that attracts matter to
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: other matter, and yeah, eventually, if there's enough matter, it'll
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: it'll it'll counteract that expansive force that came out of it,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: and then yeah, probably will either stop. Is one school
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: of thought, or the universe will contract and form what's
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: called the Big Crunch. And some people say that's what
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: our universe is. It's just the cycle of expansion and
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: contraction that takes place over many billions of years. But
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: we're just one part of a cycle that is ongoing,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: perhaps forever.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: It makes it sound when we talk about like that.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: It makes it sound like the universe is just breathing.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: It does, doesn't it.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, in a creepy way.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: And Chuck, that has to do also the reason why
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: they don't know if it's going to keep expanding or contracting.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: They don't know if it's what's called the closed universe
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: with positive curvature or one with negative curvature. Right, And
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: it also has to do with the shape of space
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: to a certain degree. And Strickland also wrote a really
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: top notch article called does space have a shape?
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah? That's it really is.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: And something from studying this that they figured out is
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: that really it doesn't seem like it has a positive
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: or a negative curvature. It seems flat. It seems like
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: it has a zero curvature. And this is what's called
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: the flat problem of the Big Bang theory. Why should
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: it be flat. That doesn't make any sense because if
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: you look at the spectrum between positive curvature and negative curvature,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of places on that spectrum where the
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: universe could fall one way or the other. But it's
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: so close to the middle that astrophysicists and cosmologists have
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: no idea if it's positive or negative in its curvature,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: and they've started to wonder, like, why should we be
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: almost exactly in the middle. It doesn't make any sense.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: It would suggest that the early universe was so finely
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: tuned that we're only slightly off of center. So it
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: would have had to have started almost completely at center,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: because remember, small fluctuations grow bigger and bigger over time
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: and on a larger scale. So since we're still so
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: close to center right now, with the universe as big
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: as it is, it would have had to have been
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: basically on top of exactly in the middle between a
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: closed and or a negative and a positive curvature at
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: the very beginning of it, which is kind of puzzling
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: in and of itself. That's like, well, that indicates some
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: sort of weird fine tuning. So does that mean that
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: the astrophysicists are off a little bit and their own
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: fine tuning of the Big Bang theory and inflation or
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: what who knows? Or is there a little kid with
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: a lighter who set the snake off? That's right, and
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: the snake was very well manufactured.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Well, that's just one thing that we can't quite explain.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: We talked earlier about the fact that at the very
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: beginning that the Big Bang theory wasn't meant to address
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: a lot of questions, one of which is that we
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: touched on was what happened before the Big Bang? And
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: we just don't know.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: It doesn't even try it doesn't.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: It can't, right, Yeah, that, like trying to explain time
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: before timing existed is futile.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Right because you get into stuff that I just suggested,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: which is basically amounts to intelligent design or whatever, and
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: there's that's beyond science. Like science isn't equipped to say, oh, well,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: what about this or what about that? And I tried
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: really hard to get Neil de grasse Tyson to say
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: something and he was not going to bite.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Well, no, and smartly, you know, I think a scientist
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: looks at the observational data and extrapolates from there, and
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: I'm sure. Like I said, I'm sure, and I think
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: even said in the interview that sure, people like to
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: talk about these things, right, but it's not like you know,
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: hard science.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: And also, to answer that flat problem that I brought up,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: apparently inflation theory does answer it does satisfy it by
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: saying the universe appears flat to us because we're looking
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: at it strictly on a very local level. Even though
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: we're looking at ninety ninety billion light years or something
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: like that, it's really just a very small segment of something.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: So if you take a balloon and you blow it up,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: it's still curved. But if you're just looking at just
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: a pinpoint segment of it, it's going to appear flat
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: to everybody looking at it from just that tiny perspective.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: So it's basically our perspective that we're looking at the
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: universe right now makes it seem like it's flat, but
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: it's really actually curved one way or the other. That's
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: the answer to that.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Well, should we talk about some of the problems with
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: the Big Bang theory. Sure there are criticisms and there
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: will continue to be. One was that is that it
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: violates the first law of thermodynamics, that you can't create
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: or destroy matter or energy, and proponents will say that
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: that's unwarranted for a couple of reasons. One is it,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: like we already said, it doesn't address the creation of
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: the universe that it was never meant to, but just
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: how it evolved or inflated over the years, over the years,
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: over the sixty or seventy years. And another reason is
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: kind of like we said earlier, is that the further
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: back you go, the rules don't apply. So maybe the
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: law of thermodynamics is just completely moot when you go
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: back that far. Yeah, like it didn't come into being
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: until later.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if matter and energy are like one and the same,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: I can imagine that some of our current laws don't
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: necessarily apply.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well probably a lot of them, right.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: And then one of the other things, too, is that
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: that inflation that supposedly happened when the strong nuclear force
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: decoupled from the electra a weak force. Yeah, and the
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: universe suddenly expanded, you know, within that one second, it
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: just kept growing and growing and growing way faster than
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: the speed of light. Yeah, And a lot of people
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: are like wrong, nothing can go faster than the speed
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: of light. Well there was no light, Well nothing you
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: could see. Yeah, there are definitely photons, but they had that.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: The proponents of Big Bang have the same answer. They say,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: well again, dude, you're talking general relativity. This this that
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have applied at all.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the answer is kind of consistently. Don't even come
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: at me with that, right your laws. Yeah, should we
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: talk about should we finish with a few other alternative explanations.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like we said, there are alternative models, right, one
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: of them is that same one that Einstein was a
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: proponent of, the steady state model. That it is not
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: actually expanding, and the apparently this this is hard for
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: me to wrap my mind around. The people who say
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: that it's not expanding explain away expansion by saying that
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: matters created as in proportion to the original density of
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: the universe. Right, so maybe the universe is expanding some
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: and more more matter has to be created to keep
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: the same density. So I think what they're saying is,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: I think that's what it means. The universe has been
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: at the same density all the time, and sure it's expanding,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: but it's also creating more matter, so.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: Which holds it static.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: Uh, the ek piotic, epiotic pyrotic.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: I know this should not be ech pyotic ech pyotic model. Yeah,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: I think that's that.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: Man, that's just we're the worst that suggests the universe
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: as a result of a collision of well, that's the
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: when you brought up earlier of two three dimensional worlds
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: and that there is some hidden fourth dimension out there.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: Well, that's part of the fourth dimension is part of
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: like standard astrophysics and cosmology. But this was like this
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: thing says our universe came out of two universes colliding
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: in the fourth dimension, which that defies me a little bit.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: But the idea that there are four dimensions in one
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: of them's time is definitely part of like standard stuff.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: It's still hard to think of. And then plasma cosmology.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: I like that one a lot because it's just totally
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: different from the way we think of the universe. It
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: seeks to describe it based on its basically it's electrical
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: charge state, you know, rather than like the temperature of
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: it or the density or anything like that. It's more
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: involved in like the plasma aspects of it, because you know,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: plasma's ionized gas and it's like a fourth state of matter,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: and plasma cosmology looks at it through that lens, which
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: is basically totally alien to everything we just talked about.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: From what I can gather, did you just say there's
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: a totally aliens out there?
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: There's aliens out there and the universe was started by
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: a little kid with a lighter. Wow, that's my stand. Well,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: if you like this, then stick around because right now, Chuck,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: we have an interview with Neil deGrasse Tys and we
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: weren't joking.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, great job on that one too, buddy.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: Thanks man, we missed you. He was like, where's Chuck?
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: No we didn't, Yes, he did.
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: Well. How you guys doing good?
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: How are you doing?
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: Are you assuming I know how stuff works?
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: I have an inkling that you may have a clue,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: So I guess my first question is then, how do
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: you specifically? How do you think of the universe when
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: you think of the universe as a whole, Like, do
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: you think of it as something like a speck of
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: dust underneath a giant fingernail or is it part of
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: a branching multiverse or is it a bubble that kind
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: of pushes up against other bubbles? Like, what is the
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: universe when you think of it?
• 51:57
  Speaker 5: I don't think I think of the universe in a
• 52:00
  Speaker 5: fundamentally different way from that of my colleagues. What you
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: want to do is separate the things we have data
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: and observations to support and the things that live and
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: thrive on the frontier of theorizing about what the universe
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: was is or will one day be, or what larger
• 52:19
  Speaker 5: system it could be a part of. So if you
• 52:22
  Speaker 5: live in the realm of data, then we are in
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: an expanding universe, and it's been expanding for nearly fourteen
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: billion years, and it was smaller in the past and
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: hot in the past, and it's getting larger and cooler
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: by the minute. And we exist on this planet we
• 52:41
  Speaker 5: call Earth, born four point six billion years ago, with
• 52:45
  Speaker 5: the rest of the Solar System in some undistinguished part
• 52:53
  Speaker 5: of an undistinguished galaxy we call the Milky Way. And
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: this scenario sure was very hard earned, and it's no
• 53:03
  Speaker 5: more than about eighty or ninety years old in total.
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: Edwin Hubble the man in this particular usage of the
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: word Edwin Hubble in the nineteen twenties, so ninety years ago,
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: nineteen twenty six discovered that there are other island universes,
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: if you will, not the way we might think of
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: that term today, but back then there were these spiral
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: fuzzy things in the night sky, imagined to be just
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: spiral fuzzy things in the milky Way. He would show
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: that those spiral fuzzy things are not in the milky Way,
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: they are entire other milky ways, other galaxies. And that
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: was a profound expanding expansion of our worldview, if you would.
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: And then just three years after that, he would show
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: that these spiral fuzzy things are rapidly moving away from us.
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: Coupled with Einstein's general theory of relativity, we would learn
• 53:55
  Speaker 5: that it's not just galaxies spreading apart within a pre
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: existing space. It is the fabric of the space and
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: time itself that's expanding. All of this is supported by data.
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: So if you have discomfort thinking that the universe had
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: a beginning and that we will expand forever, then too bad.
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: That's just what the universe says. And the universe, I've
• 54:20
  Speaker 5: said this before, the universe is under no obligation to
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: make sense to you, especially when what we learn of
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: the universe comes to us from methods and tools that
• 54:29
  Speaker 5: completely transcend our native, inborn biological senses, which in fact
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: is the great ascent of science. What are all the
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: ways we can decode the operations of nature without having
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: to rely on the limits that sent our biological senses
• 54:48
  Speaker 5: force us to occupy.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: So when science is furthered, you know, decades down the
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: road and the vision we have, or the view we
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: have of the universe we live in is magnified by
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: orders of magnitude from what we're looking at through right now,
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: what do you suspect? What shape do you suspect it's
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: going to take? Do you have suspicions? And I mean
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: if you don't, how do you keep yourself from making
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: that leap?
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: Like?
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, of course, this is what it's going to be,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: this is what we're really living in.
• 55:21
  Speaker 5: Well, we all have biases, and let me not call
• 55:24
  Speaker 5: them biases. Let's say we all have longings for how
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: we think or want the universe to be. And if
• 55:31
  Speaker 5: you begin to believe your longings too strongly, then you
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: could you might miss some realities that don't fit your expectations,
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: and someone else will catch them and make the discovery.
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: So it's okay to lean in one direction or another,
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: but don't do so while being blind to what else
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: could be true in spite of how you think it
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: might be. So, now, the scenario I gave you is
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: sort of is very well established in terms of observations, data,
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: and basically a century of thinking about and observing the universe,
• 56:12
  Speaker 5: imposing questions and answering them. So beyond that we can
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: ask is there a multiverse? A right? This seems to
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: come naturally out of certain thinking about the behavior of
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: the universe. When you try to bring together quantum physics
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: and Einstein's general relativity, there are good arguments to suggest
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: that we could be in a multiverse, and it's not obvious,
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: at least to me, how one would test that just yet.
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: So but the theories of the universe that point to
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: a multiverse are themselves well tested. So this is what
• 56:54
  Speaker 5: gives you the confidence that maybe our multiverse folks are
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: onto something. And there are other frontiers. For example, the
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: quantum physics, which is the theory of the small, and
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: general relativity, the theory of the large. They work perfectly
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: well in their own regimes. General relativity describing the large
• 57:19
  Speaker 5: scale universe, quantum physics describing with very high precision atoms, molecules, nuclei, particles,
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: this sort of thing. But in the early universe, when
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: the entire universe was the size of an atom, then
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: we might suppose that quantum forces override whatever was going
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: on with general relativity. Because now the entire universe is
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: of the size that quantum laws significantly manifest. And so
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: right now we do not have a good way to
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: merge those two theories. And this we got top people
• 57:56
  Speaker 5: working on it. So these are collectively the string theorists
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: and others in that realm who are thinking long and
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: hard about these Are there a third theory that needs
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: to be introduced that will enclose quantum physics and general
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: relativity into a deeper, broader understanding of what's going on,
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: or will quantum physics absorb general relativity. I don't know
• 58:21
  Speaker 5: that people know just yet. And it involves very high
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: levels of math and higher dimensions and this sort of thing.
• 58:28
  Speaker 5: And some people have criticized string theory for not really
• 58:31
  Speaker 5: being a legitimate theory because you can't test it in
• 58:34
  Speaker 5: any traditional way. But it's the only game in town.
• 58:37
  Speaker 5: So and they're not very expensive, you know, you give
• 58:40
  Speaker 5: them a pencil and a pad and throwing a laptop
• 58:43
  Speaker 5: and a string. Theorist is in business, so I let
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: them go as far as they can take it.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: So it does seem like there is either like you said,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: quantum physics may be the answer to all this, we
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: just don't fully understand that field yet to get back
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: to the moment of the Big Bang or what happened
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: before the Big Bang. But it could also be, from
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: what I've seen, the unified field theory that gets us
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: back to that point. But either way, to get to
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: a point where we go further beyond our current understanding,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: further back in time in the Big Bang, including before
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: the Big Bang, of what was before, it seems like
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: it's going to take a vast leap forward. Do you
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: think that leap is going to come from a genius
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: that hasn't been born yet, or has been born but
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: hasn't been educated and entered the field yet. Is that
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: how it's going to happen. Is it going to happen
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: from you know, this person combining this work with this
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: work and that work and this work, and then suddenly
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: the pieces are going to fall together.
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: In that sense, that's a great question that also has
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: a philosophical dimension to it sure, such that in modern
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: times great leaps in science. Do they happen by the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: lone genius burning the candle at midnight coming up with
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 5: a Eureka moment, or do they come about because you
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: have huge, expensive, highly collaborative scientific projects such as LIGO
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: discovering gravitational waves. Such as the next generation space telescope
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: it's called the James Web Space Telescope, not yet launched,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: but that will enable us to see galaxies being born
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: in the early universe, as well as a host of
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 5: other frontier observations that were not possible with previous telescopes. Well,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: that telescope had to be designed by whole teams of
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: people with questions that they had in mind that they
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 5: want answered by the new data. So I'm not convinced
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: that we're just waiting for a new smart person to
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: come along and have it all make sense. I think
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: we're waiting for someone to obtain new data that we've
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 5: never seen before that then forced us into new ideas
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 5: and understandings of the universe. Maybe there's some new theory
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: that maybe I'm not discounting it, but I can tell
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: you is we're in an era. Look at the Higgs boson,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 5: for example, that required the large Hadron collider and thousands
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: of scientists and tens of thousands of engineers who built
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: the thing in the first place. So we're kind of
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 5: in a collaborative era right now. And so if I
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: were a betting man, I would say that the great
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: discoveries to come will come about from huge collaborations, possibly
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 5: even international collaborations. Now that doesn't remove the question as
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 5: to whether there is an Einstein walking among us who
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 5: happened to have been born into poverty in a developing country,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 5: and then we will never know. Well, that would be
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: one of the great tragedies of modern civilization. So I,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: as an education feel very strongly about what kind of
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: access people of the world should have to knowledge, to learning,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 5: to health, to you know, a person should be able
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: to live a day and not have the entire day
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 5: be preoccupied about whether whether you have food or whether
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: or not you're going to die from a disease that
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: your neighbor just died of. So this is a So
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 5: I think we should be able to measure our state
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: of our civilization by the extent to which we are
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 5: in the position to discover another Einstein. Rising up from
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: the midst and and that's so that's one way to
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: get an Einstein. Another one is to wait around until
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: one is born into the right circumstances, right, I'd rather,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: i'd you know, we've got seven billion people on Earth.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: Somebody in there's got to be badass enough to help
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 5: us out.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: So you, I mean, you brought up your your role
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: as an educator and your world class science popular and explainer.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: What is it that got you into science as a kid?
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: I was nine years old and it was a first
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: visit to the Hayden Planetarium right here in New York,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 5: my local planetarium. I think most big cities have planetariums,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: even medium sized cities will have a planetarium. And my family,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: my parents took my brother, my sister, and me to
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 5: all the cultural institutions of the city every weekend. So
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: one weekend it was the Natural History Museum. Another it
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 5: was the zoo, another it was the aquarium. We even
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: went to other things that sort of talented grown ups did,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 5: like we'd go to a baseball game or the opera
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: or the theater. And that exposure enabled the three of
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: us to see what is possible beyond the traditional you
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: want to be a doctor, lawyer, indian chief. You know,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: the three traditional options that you're given as a six
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 5: year old or a seven year old, And so out
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: of that arose my interest in the universe that really
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: got cemented. By by the time I was eleven, I
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: knew that, in fact, I was so convinced that I
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 5: wanted to do astrophysics that I began to began to
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 5: question whether whether or not it was in fact the
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: universe that chose me.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: That's really cool. Well, thank you very much, doctor Tyson.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: We appreciate you joining us. This was like you just
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: took our big big Bang episode and moved a long
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: light years, so thank you. Oh okay, thank you.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: And the line year is not actually very far in
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: the scale of the unit, so I feel better if
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 5: I had taken it along billion.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: How about how about a PARSEK or something.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 5: PARSEK is only three point twenty six light years, so
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 5: that still won't even all right? You know, PARSK is
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: not even far enough away to get to the nearest
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 5: star to the Sun. Okay, so you're just in the
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 5: wrong zone there.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, well then how about billions of parsecs?
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 5: Nice?
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much. What a guy huh job, Yeah.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 5: He was.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: Man, he's just such a cool customer. That's why he
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: is where he is now.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you want to hang out with him,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: head on over to the Hayden Planetarium. I'm sure he'd
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: be happy to see you. Sure, you can see him
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: on tour. You can see him with Star Talk Live.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: He's got a podcast for those of you who don't
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: know with our pal Eugene Merman.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: He was on our TV show. Even he was I.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: Didn't get a chance to ask him if he remembered that.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: Sure he didn't.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: That's why I didn't get a chance.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that just would have been embarrassing.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Well, if you want to know more about the Big Bang,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: type those words into the search part HowStuffWorks dot Com
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: and they'll bring up some great stuff. And since I
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: said search part's time for listener mail.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this is Russia European nice. Remember that debate? Sure, well,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: it wasn't so much a debate, we just kind of
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: wondered in the Continents episode, Hey guys, thanks for cracking
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: me up with the show. It's astonishing how many film
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: references you can fit into a geography lesson, Yes, Russia
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: is definitely a European country exclamation point. Historically, it's always
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: been considered a part of Europe. For example, was named
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: as one of the six major European countries in World
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: War One, and the czar was closely related to other
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: royalty in Europe. This is very different from China or India,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: always much more distant and mysterious to the east. Also
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: considered that maps are very deceptive. Over seventy five percent
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: of Russia's population is on the European side, including every
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: major city from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, from Milan to Mince.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: I knew you were going to say that very nice.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: I would have been so disappointed, as you know, most
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: of the land you see to the east is empty
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: and largely uninhabitable, only there to look pretty on a map.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know about that, but that's what That's
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: what the little kid the lighter put it there for.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: So cheers. That is from Timothy, and that was one
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: heck of a science field reference.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: Timothy or Timothay? Is he Russian?
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: Oh good point, Yeah, it's.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Timothey Moscow, who just wrote it using a pseudonym Timothy belontimates.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with me and
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry. You can tweet to us at sysk podcast.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: you Should Know, and you can send us an email
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: to stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com. As always, join
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: us at a home on the way stuff you Should
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: Know dot com.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: HowStuffWorks dot com.